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Tips for Creating an Extraordinary Year

A few weeks ago, in a moment of wild enthusiasm, millions of people set their New Year’s goals.

How many do you think will actually achieve them?

Well a research study by the USA Today newspaper showed that after 12 months, on average only 4% have achieved their goals.

So, how can you be amongst that 4%?

How can you design your New Year’s goals so that your dreams actually become realities?

Here’s my 5 step formula for making your goals come true:

1. Write your goals down.

Incredibly, the USA Today study showed that people who actually wrote their goals down had a 44% chance of succeeding with them – that’s, an improvement of 1100%! And yet it takes only a few minutes to do it.

2. Only have a few of them.

It’s been my experience that the more goals I set, the less I achieve.

This year, try having just 3 major goals that you work on.

It’s a virtuous circle: The fewer goals you have, the more time you devote to each one. The more time you devote to them, the more progress you make. The more progress you make, the more motivated you become. The more motivated you become, the more you work on your goals.

3. Stay conscious of them.

I believe that one of the primary reasons people don’t make progress with goals is that they are not thinking about them all day long.

I’ve found that you tend to get what you focus on. If you think about your goal only occasionally, you won’t be driven enough to achieve it.

I try to read my goals each morning before I start work and have trained my mind to re-focus on them at several other times during the day. The more I think of them, the more actions I take to achieve them.

4. Be accountable to someone.

Many of the best coaches in the world believe that the number one way to improve performance is to be accountable to somebody. Performance ALWAYS improves when you know that you’ll soon have to report your progress to another person 🙂 Someone who won’t let you off the hook, or put up with excuses.

Take a moment now to think of somebody you could use as your mentor or accountability partner, then arrange a time each week for you to update them on the progress you’re making towards your goals.

5. Take action every day.

Great achievement does not occur in one grand moment. It’s always the culmination of hundreds, even thousands, of small steps.

If you can just discipline yourself to take one step towards each of your 3 goals every day, at the end of the year you will have taken over 1000 steps towards your dreams!

Think about that for a moment- after 1000 steps forward, you’ll either have achieved all three goals and massively improved the quality of your life, or be well on your way to doing it.